Fanfare for Literacy

Theses are pictures of us getting the library in order.  As you can see the carpenters are all finished with the interior.  The other pictures are us at various stages of the cataloguing process.  There are about 6 or 7 steps to our cataloguing process. 

 We start by assigning the book a ca

ll number that is very roughly based on the Dewey Decimal System....I'm ashamed to say I was having a lot of trouble figuring out the decimal part of that equation.  Then we entered the information into an electronic catalogue on the computer and created a catalogue card for the physical catalogue in pencil (that's one up there).  Then someone edits the card for mistakes and inks it.  When this is finished, we tape the edges of the paper back books in order to give them some added protection over the years and tape over the call number too.  The last step, and by far my favourite of all the library jobs here or in Ottawa is to take our fancy-pants-rubber-stamps we had made and to stamp the 

first page of the books and the three sides.  I think that's most of the steps...I tip my hat again to all my librarians over the years and the people at Jean-Leon Allie Library for showing me all this.  I hope the Saint Paul people in particular are not aghast at 

my irreverant trouncing on all that is Library of Congress.  

Eventually our set up was ready for the big day.

The big day involved a lot of speeches and participation from everyone is small ways.  Anyone not making a speech was playing an instrument, singing, dancing, being chiefy, doing a cultural performance or working behind the scenes.  There was a lot of cheering, celebrating, processing and even a ribbon cutting.  It was so cool to see all the kids getting excited about the books in the library.  It was definitely a community event....which is everything it should have been.

You may see from some of these pictures that Conor and I are hanging out with the chiefs when we're processing.  As I mentioned in my last post, the community was moving to quasi enstool me this week.  Despite some hitches that went on through the day, I am not enstooled but I am marked as a chief and will be enstooled formally next year (please see last post).  

Making me chief involved having a group of people come over to the house (only certain people are allowed to participate but I knew them almost all of them...most of them are really good friends in fact).  The ones I know least are actually the chiefs themselves.  They all came in and with them came a bottle of something they called Schnapps.

They sat down and explained some things then went outside to pour some of the Schnapps outside on the ground as an offering and prayed for me.  When they came back in they gave me a sizable dose of it to drink.  Not really being allowed to go outside, I settled for pouring some on the carpet, also in prayer.  I figured it was at least 40% and something akin to gin...so it should evaporate quickly.  I then drank the firewater down.  They put beads on me and and smeared my arms with white chalk.  Then more Torgbe's came in and gave me another round of Schnapps where we poured more poured more libations and drank more.  There was more chalk on my arms.  They sent for beer and then sat down to explain some things to me.  This is where my memory starts to fade a touch.

Apparently part of becoming chief is getting you very drunk....I don't think it actually is, but that's what the aforementioned Schnapps does.  I don't know what this Schnapps is but it must be higher than 40% because it kicked our asses.  The only time I was ever this drunk....It was 7 0r 8 shots of Tequila in a drinking game that involved episodes of Firefly (For those of you who are familiar with Firefly/Serenity, the one of the game's major premises was that everytime they spoke Chinese, you took a drink)  All I know is that it is imported from Holland and that the box cannot/will not give us a percentage.  To give you some perspective of how the night ended, one of these pictures, Conor took from her position on the floor.  

Luckily, this didn't happen until after they all left for the night, but it was starting around the time they sat down and started going over duties and do's and don'ts.  I'm not allowed to walk outside barefoot (I know some people who are gonna LOVE that...) and something about not dancing in public (which is tossed aside completely on the occasions where the chiefs tell us to dance....there are pictures of that at the inauguration too).  The next morning, Torgbes returned and took me out of the house (I wasn't allowed to leave since the ceremony the night before) and while they couldn't present me, they had me walk in the procession for the Library inauguration so that everyone would know, without them making a procession for that occasion in itself.  They dressed us in some beautiful kente cloth (that's what you see us wearing in all the procession pictures.

I feel like I really can't do justice to everything that happened the last few days...especially when it comes to the traditions and the enstoolment...  There are tons of pictures of everything from our whole trip that we're going to put online when we get home....but we managed a bunch for today.  

This library has been an amazing amount of work but the community always amazes me with he amount of effort they are willing to put in not just to build the place but also to make it really special for their community.  I'm also touched by the effort that people make everyday to make us feel part of their community: whether its teaching us a little more Ewe or giving us a pineapple (or making me a chief) or telling us to bring our families down.

The library project is not over...it will never really be over.  We have some few odds and ends to tie up here but even after that , there will always be new books, new ideas, new technology and new resources for this community.  It will definitely never be over.

We're looking at less than two weeks until we get home now...Not much time left to enjoy village life.

Thank you again to EVERYONE who helped make this project amazing!!!  

Love,

The Jessicat